Adrian Tănase, BVB: "Romgaz is one of the companies we are looking at to meet MSCI's liquidity criteria"

Romgaz is one of the four companies from which the management of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) expects to meet the liquidity criteria for the inclusion of our market in the emerging category by MSCI, Adrian Tanase, the general director of the BVB, said yesterday on the occasion the event that marked ten years since the listing of the natural gas producer.

The director of the BVB said: "It's been ten years since the company made very important contributions to the development of the capital market, and we hope that, in the future, it will be a very important contributor in this regard. I mention that the decision to promote to emerging market status by FTSE was made based on the fact that, at that time, three companies met the liquidity and size criteria, and one was Romgaz. It is a rather strange mechanism because, at the moment when the promotion and inclusion of Romanian companies (n.r. in the FTSE emerging market indices) took place, other companies were included. But the decision was also made based on the liquidity of Romgaz, which was one of the three companies that met the criteria at the time of the decision".

Adrian Tănase added: "We expect Romgaz to be present in international indexes. The company has taken the decision to call on the market-maker and we hope to be in the FTSE Russell indices. Also, Romgaz is one of the four companies we are looking at to meet MSCI's liquidity criteria for promotion. Along with Hidroelectrica, Banca Transilvania and OMV Petrom". According to the director of the BVB, in addition to the technical elements related to stock market aspects, there are also good economic prospects for the company, Romgaz operating in a very important sector. "We have the Neptun Deep project and we expect the capital market to be with the company in meeting its CAPEX financing requirements. From my point of view, the next ten years will be much more interesting than the last ten years", said Adrian Tănase.

The BVB director also pointed out that, in the ten years since the listing, the return on the price of Romgaz shares was 50%, and the return on the price including dividends was 170%. "This is a very good yield", emphasized Adrian Tănase.

Our capital market became emerging under the umbrella of FTSE in September 2019 when, according to the evaluations of the London agency, the shares of Romgaz, Banca Transilvania and BRD - Groupe Societe Generale were eligible to enter the FTSE Global All Cap index. It's just that the actual promotion took place a year later, and Romgaz was no longer on the London agency's list then. In the hierarchy of MSCI, the most important rating agency for capital markets and provider of global indices, our market is still in the frontier category.